ent, by seniority, by "the order on the list," as
the phrase then was, without any favor for rank or birth; commanders were
obliged to attend to their corps. "Sir," said Louvois one day to M. de
Nogaret, "your company is in a very bad state." "Sir," answered Nogaret,
"I was not aware of it." "You ought to be aware," said M. de Louvois:
"have you inspected it?" "No, sir," said Nogaret. "You ought to have
inspected it, sir." "Sir, I will give orders about it." "You ought to
have given them. A man ought to make up his mind, sir, either to openly
profess himself a courtier or to devote himself to his duty when he is an
officer." Education in the schools for cadets, regularity in service,
obligation to keep the companies full instead of pocketing a portion of
the pay in the name of imaginary soldiers who appeared only on the
registers, and who were called dummies (_passe-volants_), the necessity
of wearing uniform, introduced into the army customs to which the French
nobility, as undisciplined as they were brave, had hitherto been utter
strangers.

Artillery and engineering were developed under the influence of Vauban,
"the first of his own time and one of the first of all times" in the
great art of besieging, fortifying, and defending places. Louvois had
singled out Vauban at the sieges of Lille, Tournay, and Douai, which he
had directed in chief under the king's own eye. He ordered him to render
the places he had just taken impregnable. "This is no child's play,"
said Vauban on setting about the fortifications of Dunkerque, "and I
would rather lose my life than hear said of me some day what I hear said
of the men who have preceded me." Louvois' admiration was unmixed when
he went to examine the works. "The achievements of the Romans which have
earned them so much fame show nothing comparable to what has been done
here," he exclaimed; "they formerly levelled mountains in order to make
highroads, but here more than four hundred have been swept away; in the
place where all those sand-banks were there is now to be seen nothing but
one great meadow. The English and the Dutch often send people hither to
see if all they have been told is true; they all go back full of
admiration at the success of the work and the greatness of the master who
took it in hand." It was this admiration and this dangerous greatness
which suggested to the English their demands touching Dunkerque during
the negotiations for the peace of Ut